Zachary Effwinkle, a magical creature someone found in a moonbeam one starry night, will soon be starring in his first grownup thriller! Very exciting. While we'd hope for a backstage murder mystery in the vein of Christopher Pike's seminal Last Act, it'll probably just be Eagle Eye with fewer explosions and swears. Witch Mountain Revisted, maybe? [Variety]

AMC has ordered twelve episodes of political thriller series Rubicon, about a secret string-pulling shadow organization. It's directed by Sopranos vet Allen Coulter and costars the wonderful Miranda Richardson. Interesting. [THR]

Katharine Heigl, once so likable but now so tarnished, will star in Life As We Know It for Warner Bros. The movie is another one of those Oh, hey everyone died except you so here's a baby kind of movies. So selfish people learn to not be selfish and not be grossed out by poop diapers and somewhere up in Vermont Diane Keaton makes another vat of baby food while Elizabeth is home visiting from Colgate and Keats thinks to herself "I did that first." Kate Hudson sips a latte elsewhere and thinks "Hey, I did that too!" [Variety]

Good gravy on a biscuit, why does Heather Graham keep getting cast in movies? Sure, she'll play a lesbian who sleeps with her roommates creepy sad dad (Kevin Spacey) in Father of Invention, so it's like a sexy role again, but still. She'll join a bizarre cast that includes Craig Robinson, Camilla Belle, and Johnny Knoxville. Some casting agents were playing a drunken came of Truth Or Dare over the weekend, and one lady kept choosing Dare! [THR]

Hey, here's a sentence that you can read on the internet today: "MTV is also pondering a reinvention of '80s film Teen Wolf in series format, with a greater emphasis on romance, horror and werewolf mythology." Oh, terrific. Meanwhile we're busy on our series remake of Earth Girls Are Easy, which will be a political piece about aliens that probes deeply into ideas of terrorism, detention of prisoners, and the clash of religion and secularism. [Variety]

10.6 million people tuned in to watch Jon & Kate Gosselin announce that they are dibborcing on Monday night. To put that number in perspective, that's two Minnesotas' or one Michigan's worth. Ten Rhode Islands! Every single person in Portugal watched Jon & Kate on Monday night. [THR]

Ram-faced actor Daniel Craig just might star in Jim Sheridan's next pic, a "psychological thriller" (as opposed to a pharmacological thriller or a scatological thriller) about a man who moves to a new house with his family and surprise there was murder and, surprise, everyone's ghosts. Though, Sheridan and Craig do seem like a good fit, what with Craig's pugilist's face and Sheridan's penchant for pugilists. [THR]

Martin Lawrence will be here forever. [THR]

Image via Bauer-Griffin

Regardless, Steven Spielberg and his newly announced cast — Jamie Bell as the intrepid titular reporter (Tintin, not the unicorn) and Daniel Craig as villainous pirate Red Rackham — have commenced principl photography on their long-awaited adaptation of the 80-year-old Belgian adventure yarn. THR reports that the motion-capture shoot will arrive in 3-D some time in 2011, with producer Peter Jackson likely in line to direct the follow-up if/when the first one achieves the grand ambitions planned by studio partners Sony and Paramount.

And how could it not — it's got secrets! It's got unicorns! It's got an animated Simon Pegg and Nick Frost! What could go wrong, besides the shattered Hand of LaBeouf that kept Spielberg's probable first choice out of the franchise? Ancient history, that, with the semi-redoubtable Bell/Craig box-office tandem yielding this kind of inarguable blockbuster promise. Our only real question is where to place our speculative hopes and dreams now that cameras are rolling. Anyone? And Hilary Duff need not inquire.

• Anchors aweigh for 'Tintin' [THR]

The actor gave an interview to the Miami Herald ostensibly to promote a long-running PBS series about the environment that he narrates (who knew?), but which actually served as a platform for Damon to launch a new host of feuds. After calling deposed New York Times columnist William Kristol an "idiot," Big Hollywood mastermind Andrew Breitbart scrambled in to offer $100,000 to Damon should he debate Kristol in a public forum, which is certainly the best possible use for a spare hundred grand in today's economic climate. Then, Damon went after 007 himself:

''They could never make a James Bond movie like any of the Bourne films,'' Damon says scornfully. "Because Bond is an imperialist, misogynist sociopath who goes around bedding women and swilling martinis and killing people. He's repulsive.

"Steve [Soderbergh, who produced yet another of Damon's spy movies, Syriana] told me that years ago he was offered a Bond movie. He told them he'd do it if they gave him creative control. Absolutely not, they said. They have a formula, they stick to it, and it makes them a lot of money. They know what they're doing, and they're going to keep doing it.''

To be fair, the Bond producers did experiment with adding children and extra fingers to the series, though neither note panned out. Perhaps if they introduced a Palin-pushing columnist as Bond's archnemesis—"K," shall we say?—Damon would finally be willing to overlook Bond's caddish ways.

• The opinionated Mr. Damon [Miami Herald]

According to the trade, the film will track McQueen from his first big break (1956's Somebody Up There Likes Me) to his battle with lung cancer in his final years. That timeline mandates an actor who can play a range from 26 years old (at least) to 50.

The younger end of the role might disqualify the most natural successor to the throne of McQueen: Daniel Craig, a flinty, blond man's man who nevertheless turns 41 in March. Thomas Jane is only a year younger than Craig and could probably pass for even younger than that, but the scheduling demands of his pendulous jumbo salami (it has its own show!) might not permit him the opportunity.

Thus, producers may have to turn to younger, abs-ier recruits. Ryan Phillippe falls smack into the sweet spot of McQueen's age range, but there's something too vain and self-regarding about his screen presence that's at odds with McQueen's tossed-off cool. Aussie import Sam Worthington is poised to be the Next Big Action Hero with lead roles in Avatar and Terminator: Salvation, but can he act? We have a feeling that producers may want to emulate the casting of James Franco in 2001's James Dean by minting an up-and-comer—in which case Twilight's Cam Gigandet could get the nod. We'd just like to note that the Defamer casting office is officially two for two as of today—Cam, we'll accept our cut in gold doubloons.

• Steve McQueen biopic in works [Variety]

WHAT'S NEW: After the starry, lucrative grand finale that was the Christmas weekend, only four films bothered to shuffle out of the holiday hangover on to screens in the last minutes of 2008. Neither of the biggest among them — Defiance and Good — seem to have designated The Reader and Valkyrie worthy-enough Nazis-by-way-of-Hollywood parables for the season, so we now face a quartet of films recounting the era — each in their own, fitfullly successful ways, but perhaps not enough to justify their coexistence when all anyone really wants to do is sleep in until '09 begins in earnest next Monday.

Still, they're out there: Defiance (finally reaching screens after a delay by Paramount Vantage) banishes screen siblings Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell to the Belarussian woods, where their makeshift Jewish refugee encampment in 1941 established a heroic, true-story counterpoint to the horrors of the Holocaust. Directed by Edward Zwick, who previously dramatized Glory, The Last Samurai and Blood Diamond to within an inch of their lives, Defiance is Oscar fodder of the highest grade and the lowest momentum, opening on two screens too late in the year to aquire any traction other than a per-theater average that should crack $40,000.

Good, meanwhile, is a casualty of similar timing and near-mute word-of-mouth, adapting C.P. Taylor's play about a German intellectual (Viggo Mortensen, recalibrating his Aragorn accent to an academic lilt) who finds his novel about euthanasia perverted to endorse Nazi atrocities. The problem: He's the pervert, the proverbial "good German" who comes to realize that his helplessness is the least of the consequences of his complicity in Hitler's regime. Mortensen has the right idea here, following an enlightened parallel of Kate Winslet's equally bewildered, illiterate war criminal in The Reader, but Vicente Amorim's direction is so woefully on-the-nose and stage-managed (let Good count as Exhibit A in the Steadicam's own trial for crimes against humanity) that the actors are almost incidental to the moral crisis beating you over the head. It's too bad; there's something here that filmmakers Stephen Frears or Neil Jordan — with Mortensen's aid — probably could have knocked out of the park. But not this year.

Also opening: The Bollywood Memento rip-off — complete with amnesia, tattoos, Polaroids and everything — Ghajini; and the slice-of-arty-20-something-life Let Them Chirp a While.

THE BIG LOSER: N/A, unless you count us.

THE UNDERDOG: There's not so much to recommend here, either, so let's just suggest once again: If you haven't seen Synecdoche, New York, it's time. And even if you have, a second viewing of 2008's best film can't hurt.

FOR SHUT-INS: Now we're talking. New DVD's this week include the Shia-running-for-his-life thriller Eagle Eye; the underrated Keira Knightley drama The Duchess; Ricky Gervais's abortive big-screen breakthrough Ghost Town; Nick Broomfield's terrific narrative feature debut Battle For Haditha; and Alan Ball's notorious piece of shit Towelhead. Happy New Year — it can only get better from here.

WHAT'S NEW: Quantum of Solace has the wide-release slot to itself, where Daniel Craig's brooding Bond will likely crest above $60 million — by far the highest opening gross of any 007 film to date. We'll call it for $63.7 million despite some pull from leftovers Madagascar 2 and Role Models, themselves expecting $40 million and $10 million respectively in their second weekends.

Your options are a lot better when avoiding the multiplex in LA: Jean-Claude Van Damme's meta-self-biopic JCVD is opening, along with the almost universally acclaimed Catherine Deneuve/Mathieu Amalric dramedy A Christmas Tale. Also: The Alphabet Killers, featuring Eliza Dushku as a police detective (!); the explicit gay Israeli romantic comedy Antarctica; the talky Afghanistan war indie B.O.H.I.C.A. (Army slang for "Bend Over Here it Comes Again"); the Liberian repression doc Pray the Devil Back to Hell; the Jewish basketball chronicle The First Basket; and a new adaptation of Dalton Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun.

THE BIG LOSER: Aside from the glut of indies above, chasing scraps from art-house audiences on their way to DVD — and Soul Men continuing to underperform with $2.2 million or so — today's slate seems to be pretty insulated from disaster. Everyone wins!

THE UNDERDOG: Trainspotting director Danny Boyle is said to have made the best film of his career with Slumdog Millionaire, about a winning 18-year-old contestant on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Except the host thinks he's cheating; he knows too much for a Mumbai slum kid, and his eventual grilling at the hands of the police reveals a sort of Dickens-meets-Bollywood trajectory of lessons learned, knowledge gained ad love lost throughout his youth. Rhapsodizing critics are pushing it for a Best Picture nomination, which, if the Oscar witches at Fox Searchlight have anything to say about it, it will probably receive. But it will need Little Miss Sunshine/Juno traction at the box office, and on 10 screens this weekend, that would probably mean a per-screen average of at least $12,000 to start. Like its hero, we think it's got a good shot.

FOR SHUT-INS: New DVD's this week include Hellboy II: The Golden Army, the gay Hutt-starring Star Wars: The Clone Wars; Takeshi Miike's mystifying Sukiyaki Western Django; and complete-series box sets of both The Sopranos and The Cosby Show.

So is it Bond or nothing for you? Are you saving seats on the Slumdog Millionaire bandwagon? Or is The Clone Wars badness just too tempting to ignore any longer? Be honest! You're among friends.

Ex-Bond Roger Moore has recently voiced his disappointment over the character's devolution into a monosyllabic id, lumbering around hotel lobbies and breaking necks in skimpy gay swimwear. "My Bond," he said wistfully, "was a lover and a giggler." Yes, we remember him well—so it's in his honor that we dedicate the above montage we call Five Decades of James Bond Sex Puns. We hope it Moonrakes your Octopussies off. (Thanks to Nick McGlynn for putting this together, and Maxim for finding the clips.)

• Previously: Ex-Bond Wishes Daniel Craig Was More of a 'Lover and a Giggler' [Defamer]

'I am happy to have done [the series], but I'm sad that it has turned so violent,' Moore says.

'That's keeping up with the times, it's what cinema-goers seem to want and it's proved by the box-office figures,' Moore said in an interview about his memoir, My Word is My Bond.

...While making The Man With the Golden Gun, director Guy Hamilton wanted Bond to be tougher and had him threaten to break Maud Adams' character's arm to get information, he writes.

'I suggested my Bond would have charmed the information out of her by bedding her first. My Bond was a lover and a giggler, but I went along with Guy,' the British actor wrote.

Though Haggis couldn't get the idea of a Bond baby past Daniel Craig, we would have loved to see him pitch a scene where 007 threatens a global supervillain not with a Walther PPK but with an unexpected, high-pitched giggle, eventually capping off Quantum of Solace with a nightgown-clad pillow fight at M's office (oh, the hair-braiding that would ensue!).

[Photo Credit: AP]

• 'James Bond is too violent now,' says former 007 Roger Moore [Daily Mail]

Clearly it depends on whom you ask. By at least one person's standards Batman is already Turkish, and Hancock recently depicted cinema's first drunk, misanthropic superhero as a black dude living on the streets. Global audiences threw $624 million at Will Smith in the latter film, and according to Craig, may be color-blind enough to greet a black Bond with similar largesse:

"After Barack Obama's victory I think we might have reached the moment for a coloured 007. I think the role could easily be played by a black actor, because the character created by Ian Fleming in the '50s has undergone a great deal of evolution and continues to be updated."

Yes, he said "coloured," it's how they roll in the UK, calm down. Craig noted as well that the politically incorrect (at best) Fleming probably wouldn't approve were he alive — a qualification hardly as significant as whether or not viewers who voted in a black president would approve. And even that is an impossible dynamic to parse considering how — if we are the "changed" nation we say we are — Obama's victory owed more to economic and political factors (not to mention pure timing) than the color of his skin. Do we really think we've "reached the moment," or will we only know when the right black Bond comes along?

Beyonce's Wonder Woman scenario is simultaneously simple and more complex. Moviegoers and critics were decidedly stingy to Halle Berry's Catwoman, yielding only $82 million in 2004. Warner Bros., which released Catwoman and whose president Jeff Robinov drew fire last year after allegedly suggesting the studio was done with female leads, has Wonder Woman in limbo (along with Joel Silver) since Joss Whedon abandoned it last year.

So that settled it, we thought, until Beyoncé came along — appropriately Amazonian and looking for her next opportunity coming off her turn as Etta James in the forthcoming Cadillac Records.

"I want to do a superhero movie, and what would be better than Wonder Woman? It would be great. And it would be a very bold choice. A black Wonder Woman would be a powerful thing. It's time for that, right? [...]

"After doing these roles that were so emotional I was thinking to myself, 'OK, I need to be a superhero.' [...] Although, when you think about the psychology of the heroes in the films these days, they are still a lot of work, of course, and emotional. But there's also an action element that I would enjoy."

"It's time for that, right?" Is it? Seriously, we're asking: Is it time for an epochal presidential election to influence Hollywood casting? This town may have helped get Obama elected, but does it have the balls to prove it wasn't a fluke? And are women invited to the party?

• Discuss: Is the World Ready for a Black James Bond? [Cinematical]

• Beyoncé wants to lasso the role of Wonder Woman [Source]

"Haggis had an idea they weren't fond of, and I didn't know if it would work or not," says Forster. "The idea was that Vesper in the last movie, maybe she had a kid, and there would be an orphan out there. It wasn't anything to insult the franchise. But they felt it wasn't particularly Bond — him looking for the kid. I think Paul thought he just leaves the kid, he doesn't deal with it. But [the producers] thought that would be really nasty, too, because Bond was an orphan himself. If he would find a kid, would he just leave it? They were so vehemently against it. That was the only time I saw, really, 'No, we can't do that.' They said, 'Once he finds the kid, Bond can't just leave the kid. It's not right.'"

Could Bond really have weathered the change from secret agent to absentee surrogate father? We have a hard time believing that Bond would lift a finger for a bratty British tyke, but that's OK — his Bond girl has several fingers to spare.

• How James Bond Nearly Became a Father [New York]

The Communist Party in St. Petersburg says Olga Kurylenko, the Ukrainian-born model who plays a Bolivian agent in the latest Bond film, "Quantum of Solace," has betrayed her roots.

"In the name of all communists we appeal to you, prodigal daughter of poor Ukraine and deserter of Slavic world," the party said in an open letter dated Oct. 21 and posted on their Web site Friday.

The Soviet Union "gave you free education, free medical care but nobody knew you would commit an act of intellectual and moral betrayal that you would become a movie kept girl of Bond, who in his movies kills hundreds of Soviet people and citizens of other socialist countries: Cubans, Vietnamese, North Koreans, Chinese and Nicaraguans," the party said.

Sergei Malenkovich, head of the party's regional organization, told The Associated Press..."In this movie they wanted to show that a Ukrainian girl sleeps with an American. It's a part of information and psychological war."

Sure, Bond is actually British, not American, but we can understand how a minor detail like that would get lost amidst the waves of devastation and shame washing (equally) over all the deserted Slavs. For her own sake, we hope that Kurylenko will renounce her status as a "movie kept girl of Bond" before she suffers a tragic, 007-worthy fate as her nude body is recovered from the center of a sinister series of Russian nesting dolls.

• Russia communists say Ukraine Bond girl a traitor [Yahoo!]

· "It's James Bond, licence to bore....Bond is a boorish oaf who simply rushes from country to country with the manic speed of Jason Bourne, including sequences shot in Panama, Chile, Italy, Mexico and Austria, in a plot about holding a country to ransom over its water supply...Quantum of Solace lacks any wit, ironic or otherwise, which has been a strength of so many 007 films...At around one hour 40 minutes, this Bond is shorter than most. Somehow it felt longer." [Times Online]
· "Quantum Of Solace doesn’t seem like a major entry in the Bond canon. Well under two hours long, it’s shorter and more frenetic than most of its predecessors, and an often-jolting experience to watch. Loose ends about. What it does have, though, above all, is vigour." [The Independent]
· "I was disappointed there was so little dialogue, flirtation and characterisation in this Bond: Forster and his writers Paul Haggis, Neal Purvis and Robert Wade clearly thought this sort of sissy nonsense has to be cut out in favour of explosions." [The Guardian]
· "One wonders if director Marc Forster and screenwriters Paul Haggis and Neal Purvis haven't tried a little too hard to distance the film from traditional Bond plots. The expository dialogue scenes can be dull, and cram in so many machinations and double-crossings that it's easy to lose track of who's duping whom." [Telegraph]
· [SPOILERS] "Mostly it doesn't feel like a Bond film at all. Not once does Craig say: "The name's Bond. James Bond." There's no Q or his gadgets. Heck, we even see Bond in a cardigan. There are no risque quips or arched eyebrows. This Bond is a soul in torment having lost the love of his life when Vesper Lynd drowned...It doesn't disappoint - just don't expect the brilliance of Casino Royale. [Daily Mail]
· "The raw nature of the film may put off some who yearn for the days of gizmos, gadgets and Bond quips as he dispenses with faceless opponents...It's a film that feels like the second part of a trilogy, with this being the bleaker second act." [BBC]

So who's in and who's out?

· The Soloist: OUT. The move to March 13 stings for everyone, especially with millions in marketing dollars already being spent ahead of the Jamie Foxx/Robert Downey Jr. drama's Nov. 21 release. Both men were on the bubble for actor nominations — Foxx as a schizophrenic cellist and RDJ as the journalist who chronicles his feel-good recovery journey — but Paramount's new conservatism (i.e. an intern hiding Brad Grey's checkbook) means it only has so many in-house resources to lend to its fall releases. The studio's semi-official insistence that the shifts have nothing to do with the film's quality or favoring its homegrown Benjamin Button and Scott Rudin/DreamWorks offering Revolutionary Road, but that's bullshit. It's not 2006 anymore; nobody can afford all this prestige at once.

· Defiance: IN. Barely. Paramount inherited the WWII-era Daniel Craig drama from its lopped-off Vantage arm; but unlike The Soloist, the studio didn't have it on its Oscar-season books until earlier this year. Pushed back from Dec. 12, it'll still get a qualifying run in New York and L.A. before opening wide on Jan. 16 — sort of an afterthought treatment that won't likely sit well with director/producer and biennial Oscar bridesmaid Ed Zwick, but hey: There's always the ShowEast Kodak Award. Congrats again, Ed!

And while we're at it, let's not forget the neglected Weinstein and MGM family:

· The Road: OUT. As noted yesterday, the Weinsteins took it back from MGM only to nudge it from Nov. 14 to an undisclosed release date in December. It's not finished, and the Weinsteins can't promote it; we foresee this one left wailing on someone's doorstep in a basket some time in mid-2009.

· The Reader: IN. It's apparently back on the Weinstein Web site, and Bob Weinstein thinks it's "terrific"! And now without Defiance to contend with, Harvey's Folly may actually have a shot at an audience on Dec. 12. Oscars, though? We're not so sure.

· Valkyrie: IN. Even the MGM Tower receptionist is pulling her weight on the campaign these days. If gold had a smell, Valkyrie would reek.

Asked if he agreed with fans who have laughed at the new name, Craig told GQ: "No, because I was involved in making the decision. Names were coming out, some ludicrous stuff was going back and forth – I can't remember exactly, but you know the sort of thing: 'The Blood On Your Face'. I knew I didn't want 'death', 'die', 'bleed' or any of those things in the title.

"We had it written down on boards and we'd literally go and sit in rooms and stare at this title. If you look at 'Q's, they're really weird in a title.

"As soon as it came out, people were saying, 'Ooh, it sounds like Harry Potter.' No, it's Quantum of Solace. I was saying, 'It's a Bond title! The name of a Bond film is not about anything. Live And Let Die? Octopussy? What does it mean? It means very little. We've got nothing to worry about."

Though we mourn the loss of the producer-suggested title You Only Bleed When You Die From Death, we have to agree with Craig that the Bond names typically mean very little (and that Q's are totally rad!). Still, why didn't the star insist on his perilous title's incorporation into the film's theme song? Jack White yowling words that rhyme with "solace" might have provided the Bond theme with the frisson it so desperately needed — or at least a great many more lines about undersung Kojak star Telly Savalas.

[Photo Credit: AP]

• Daniel Craig: Bond film name Quantum of Solace was my idea [Telegraph]

1. Brad Pitt will win an Academy Award. We know the post-Toronto establishment has all but engraved Mickey Rourke's name on this year's Best Actor Oscar (hell, even Rourke has engraved his name on this year's Best Actor Oscar), but taking both The Wrestler (release date TBD) and Pitt's epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (12/25) sight unseen, we'll take the aging-backward-on-other-people's-bodies gimmick over the gritty indie comeback 10 times out of 10. Not that it won't be close: Brad Grey will spend more on his old pal's campaign than Fox Searchlight is probably ready to drop on Rourke's, but Rourke will be the more accessible nominee to the media. Look for dark horse Sean Penn (Milk) to split the field late; Focus Features won't settle for another 0-fer in '08.

2. W. (10/17) will tip the election to the GOP. Opening less than three weeks before Election Day, the film will be too muddled to move the Democrats yet irreverent enough to galvanize the Republican base against Hollywood one more time before voting. Oliver Stone will be recognized as the new Ralph Nader.

3. You're going to miss Don LaFontaine a lot more than you think. Otherwise execrable trailers like this one for The Haunting of Molly Hartley (10/31) acquired bittersweet relevance overnight:

4. The Weinstein Company will muscle its way back to prominence. Harvey had a relatively hemorrhage-free summer, closed out by his $16 million-grossing (and counting) Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Meanwhile, Zack and Miri Make a Porno (10/31) left Toronto with goodwill to spare, the LA immigrant saga Crossing Over (10/24) has Harrison Ford, Sean Penn and others channeling Crash, and the company bumped up The Reader for Kate Winslet Oscar consideration. (NB: The Rourke Factor also reportedly inspired Harvey to finally slot his long-shelved Killshot on Nov. 7.) The Weinsteins being the Weinsteins, of course, the operation could crash at any time, but at least the ensuing conflagration promises Hindenberg levels of spectacle. That's our Harvey.

5. Owen Wilson will emerge from, return to hiding after explaining the trailer to Marley & Me (12/25). That is all.

6. The Soloist (11/21) will be better than it sounds. But it sounds great, right? Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx, directed by Pride and Prejudice/Atonement helmer Joe Wright? Alas, the logline: "A schizophrenic, homeless musician from Skid Row, Los Angeles dreams of playing at Walt Disney Concert Hall." Based on a true story, natch: Downey Jr. plays the real-life LAT reporter who befriends him, warning Foxx behind the scenes about the perils of going full-schizo. All things being equal, we like their chances.

7. Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York (10/24) will be this year's unlikeliest tearjerker. Not just for its devastating, beautiful final act, but also for the probability that Sony Classics will weep red ink when it makes about five cents at the box office.

8. Twilight (11/21) will only be the second-best vampire movie released this fall. You won't find Let the Right One In (10/24) on the cover of EW, but you'll find the Swedish export in a lot of festival juries' hearts since last spring. Half coming-of-age romance and half vengeful horror epic, it picks up the story of a bullied 12-year-old boy whose sweet new girlfriend next door ends up being several thousand years older than she looks — and behaves accordingly. Genre distributor Magnet Releasing might only get this on a hundred screens, but watch the word-of-mouth and top-10-list acclaim bump it into sleeper status by the end of the year.

9. Extreme Movie will open to a $0 gross after viewers confuse it with the other, less-illustrious Movie franchise. But you can be prepared: Extreme Movie is the teen sex comedy starring Michael Cera and Frankie Muniz; Disaster Movie et. al. are the ones whose auditoriums smell faintly of piss. Know the difference!

10. Daniel Craig will miss 2006. Casino Royale was a surprising, sporadically brilliant reboot, but the honeymoon is over: Quantum of Solace's trailer isn't dazzling anyone; the title is stillborn; Sony couldn't settle on a US release date (it finally chose 11/14); and unfairly or not, franchise obsessives want nothing to do with new director Marc Forster. And all this after the Bond curse cost Craig part of his finger. It's a cruel world, but not as cruel as it'll seem after Defiance (12/12), the WWII Jewish resistance drama in which he and screen bros Liev Schrieber and Jamie Bell fight off Nazis during the invasion of Poland. Among the last of Paramount Vantage's orphaned prestige titles, and opening opposite Doubt, an expanded Frost/Nixon and The Day the Earth Stood Still, it's bound to knock Craig back to stardom's second tier for a while to come.

11. Beverly Hills Chihuahua (10/3) will astonish and amaze. But you already knew that.

"I guess they are going for clean-cut and boring. When I do release mine – and I am tempted to do it on the same day – this would be the bigger hit. If they change their minds, I’m waiting!”

...She added, “I do think they could have waited a bit. If they want a worldwide hit, I have them all up here [pointing to her beehive]."

Reportedly, Winehouse's Bond theme is only hamstrung by her inability to settle on a name; having found that the existing Bond titles "Die Another Day" and "All Time High" hit too close to home, she's settled on three potential options: "Speedball," "MoonBlaaaaker," and "Cunts Like Kanye."

• Amy's Bond revenge [New Magazine]

[John Woo's film] Red Cliff isn't the only would-be blockbuster beset by accidents and tragedy. Two stuntmen were burned while making the Adam Sandler comedy You Don't Mess With the Zohan. Visual effects technician Conway Wickliffe was killed while prepping the Batmobile for the upcoming The Dark Knight. According to a production source, Wickliffe and a colleague were videotaping the Batmobile as it spun around a racetrack to see if it was properly rigged to do stunts. Wickliffe was hanging out the window with the video recorder when the driver accidentally careened into a tree. The police investigated and found no wrongdoing.

To say nothing of poor James Bond's car trouble, including two unintentionally totaled autos and one injured stuntman on Quantum of Solace. But there's hope yet after the jump!

"In the last 10 years, and particularly in the last five years, CGI has kept the risk assessment down on most stunts," says Sony's president of physical production, Gary Martin. "We have alternatives. We have safe ways to plan the stunts and keep people out of harm's way."

Sony, like all studios, has a team of safety specialists who travel from set to set to monitor stunts and crew safety. Martin declines to speak specifically about any Sony film — such as Quantum of Solace — but he says the recent spate of accidents is mostly a reflection of the increased amount of films with stunts and spectacle.

Kind of like how our increased, sincere affection for Mexican culture has yielded the likes of Carlos Mencia and Beverly Hills Chihuahua — accidents literally do happen. And according to government figures cited by the Times, it's to the tune of 270 injured actors and 230 dinged-up stunt performers on film sets in 2006. But these are indeed the times we live in, and Defamer salutes each and all of the industry's brave stunt performers; may you never again know third-degree burns in the service of an Adam Sandler comedy.

• 'Red Cliff' and Bond: Safety first on set — or last? [LAT]

Once again, color us unimpressed. James Bond's gone rogue? Um, as we alluded to before the jump, we've already seen that movie. Three times, in fact. Although, we did find it interesting that director Marc Forster (he of Monster's Ball fame) decided to film a scene that recreates this year's most controversial Vanity Fair cover shoot, substituting British babebot Gemma Atherton for the despoiled Miley, in a plot twist that seems on the surface to be more Friedberg and Seltzer than Ian Fleming. If test audiences like what they see and demand that Forster insert a few more pop culture spoofs into his film, then maybe this movie will be worth seeing after all. We've got our fingers crossed for the "I Can Do 200 Of These" guy.

*We're pretty sure it wasn't actually Uno, but like we said, we were asleep.

• Quantum Of Solace [Moviefone]